Actor LIAM NEESON has posed with a girly pink purse for a new cancer campaign. The TAKEN hunk is promoting the pretty accessory for Britain's Cancer Research, which hopes to raise funds through sales of the bags.

Oscar-nominee and bad-ass extraordinaire Liam Neeson just joined the cast of Battleship. You know, that movie based on a board game? Yeah. That Battleship. Eeesh.
In the Peter Berg-directed film, Neeson will play Admiral Shane, a Naval officer near the center of a grand-scale science fiction story about a fleet of ships that defend Earth from alien invaders.
Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch and True Blood vampire Alexander Skarsgård, along with Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker, are all appearing in the Universal Pictures production. The movie is produced by Scott Stuber, Sarah Aubrey, and Berg, along with Hasbro's Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir, and Duncan Henderson. Filming started today in Hawaii, which is quickly becoming a go-to destination for any film that requires a beach, water, boats and scantily clad women.
Though I've no doubt in my mind that Neeson won't steal the show (unless Skarsgard's abs do), we can't help but wonder why a veteran of productions as acclaimed and wide-ranging as Schindler's List, Kinsey and Taken would join a guaranteed-to-be-awful film like this. Seriously. Aliens from space engaging in naval war? Blech. Nothing about Battleship sounds appealing. Maybe Neeson just wanted to make a quick buck....or needed a vacation, since Kitsch and Skarsgard will likely be doing all of the heavy lifting anyway.
Source: Deadline

The Schindler's List star was left devastated when Richardson passed away in March 2009 after suffering a brain injury in a skiing accident in Montreal, Canada.
But now Neeson has reportedly gone public with a new romance with British businesswoman Freya St Johnston.
The actor left Nobu restaurant in London on Friday (03Sep10) clasping the 35 year old's hand, reports Britain's The Mail On Sunday.
But Johnston has refused to confirm or deny the relationship, telling the publication, "I am not saying anything whatsoever."

Liam Neeson seems to have taken a liking to the action thriller genre of late, following his surprise hit Taken with leading roles in a number of actioners, including Clash of the Titans, The A-Team, and the upcoming Unknown White Male. Add to that list The Grey, a survival drama that would reunite the 58-year-old actor with Titans director Joe Carnahan in a film that sounds like an unlikely cross between Armageddon, Into the Wild, and Disney's Snow Dogs gone horribly awry.
Heat Vision reports that Neeson is currently negotiating to join the thriller, the story of a man (Neeson) and his oil drilling team who survive a plane crash in Alaska, and must struggle to survive in the wilderness. The situation escalates when the men discover they have intruded upon the territory of a pack of large, unnaturally aggressive wolves with a taste for human meat. Carnahan wrote the survival drama with newcomer Ian Jeffers, the screenwriter who wrote the original short story The Grey is based on. Scott Free is on board to produce with financing from Inferno Entertainment.
Neeson would replace another A-Team actor, Bradley Cooper, who was originally set to headline The Grey when it was first announced at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. While it may seem odd to some that Neeson has been set to fill the shoes of an actor 23 years his junior, the grizzled Taken star actually strikes me as a much more adept wolf-killer than Cooper, who is far too pretty to be taken seriously as the leader of a wolf-averse oil drilling team. Have you seen Taken? I almost feel sorry for those wolves.
Source: Heat Vision

Let's get one thing straight: the reason why the movies we're so excited for end up tanking in the box-office is because we're just too excited for them. But because they just look so good, we can't help ourselves! We all agreed we'd be super amped for Scott Pilgrim, and we told all our friends and our bankers and the people who take our money at our tolls to get excited too, because it was supposed to be the movie of OUR GENERATION! But they must not have listened or got distracted by their cats because that movie performed horribly...even worse than the last time I tried to retrieve a stuffed animal using that claw from the "game" that sits outside my supermarket. But it's okay, because there will probably be a sequel. We do, however, have to learn our lesson: which is not to let our outrageous enthusiasm become so evident once we see a trailer for the next CERTAIN blockbuster, so that the movie we WANT to succeed finally does.
So here's the trailer for something we're only looking forward to a little bit, but not really, because no I cannot. CAN'T DO IT. THIS IS TOO STIMULATING. Save the nonchalant protective covering for a Liam Neeson movie. The trailer for The Last Airbending Exorcism On The Left starring Miley Cyrus is worth re-wiring your whole house so instead of your doorbell ringing whenever someone wants your permission to enter your dwelling, they push a button and this plays on your television. Never again will you wish you had more friends to stop by.

John Woo's most recent film, the historical epic Red Cliff, went largely unseen here in the states despite it's grand scale of adventure, but the veteran filmmaker is taking all the necessary steps to ensure that his upcoming Flying Tigers will have global appeal. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Woo is interested in casting Liam Neeson as the star of the WWII aerial combat pic, an ambitious $90 million production which will is planned to be a major IMAX release.
The film would focus on U.S. Army Air Corp Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault - the contentious American officer whose volunteer Flying Tigers squadron trained the first generation of Chinese fighter pilots taking on Japan in WWII. The Flying Tigers flew successful missions around the city of Kunming in Yunnan province against the raiding Japanese and flew supplies to both Nationalist and Communist Chinese forces. Playing opposite whoever is cast as Chennault will be a young Chinese actor in the role of a pilot in training. Woo mentioned the likes of actor Liu Ye, who last appeared in a lead role in Lu Chuan's Nanjing Massacre picture City of Life and Death. Clearly, the American audience will be more interested in whoever will be playing Chennault, so the casting process is key to ensuring the film's success.
“It’s got to be a star but it’s hard to find the right one, because at that time Chennault was almost 50 years old. Ideally, I’ve been thinking of Liam Neeson as the title actor,” Woo said. CAA confirmed it represents Neeson but declined to comment on Flying Tigers. Woo is writing the script with Chris Chow and will co-produce with his longtime partner Terrence Chang of Lion Rock Productions.
Woo has long been one of my favorite foreign filmmakers and it's about time he had a fitting return to mainstream Hollywood cinema. His influence on the action genre is immeasurable - take a look at the works of Quentin Tarantino, Tony Scott and Brett Ratner (just to name a few), then go back and look at The Killer and Hard Boiled to see how profoundly he has effected these artists. I was left in awe by the imagery of Red Cliff and was saddened that it wasn't embraced by the public, but I realize that it was based on a story that most, if not all Americans are unfamiliar with. The equally expansive Flying Tigers focuses on a story that is well known to both Chinese and Americans, and that can only help in drumming up interest in the project. With the production gearing up for a spring start and a late 2011 release, Woo may finally begin the next chapter in his cinematic success story.
Source: THR

The Kinsey star admits she was so devastated following Richardson's 2009 skiing accident death she considered postponing her nuptials two months later - but then she remembered how much her friend had been looking forward to the wedding.
She tells the new issue of More magazine, "It (tragedy) changed all of our lives. Those of us who knew and loved her and benefited from the incredible talent will never be the same.
"We actually thought about postponing the wedding. She would have been there. Of all my friends, she was the one who was most annoyed that we were taking so long. She was so happy when we got engaged, and she kept saying, 'When is this wedding happening?' We were on the phone a lot about the plans."
And Linney admits she was delighted when Richardson's widower Liam Neeson - her Kinsey co-star - and so many other mutual friends could be a part of the Connecticut wedding.
She adds, "We all needed something to be happy about."
Neeson actually agreed to walk Linney down the aisle on her big day. The actress wed Marc Schauer in May 2009.

The Oscar winner was shooting the third installment of her family film franchise, Nanny McPhee Returns, in a Hollywood studio next door to where the Clash of the Titans movie was being filmed and she would spend her breaks catching up with fellow Brit Liam Neeson during his downtime on the movie remake.
But Thompson admits she was caught short on one occasion when cameras started rolling on Clash of the Titans - and she ended up hiding behind a prop throne as Neeson portrayed Greek god Zeus opposite Ralph Fiennes and Danny Huston.
She says, "I'm in the Clash of the Titans movie. Liam Neeson was standing there in a lot of gold and silver playing Zeus and I was talking to him, standing there on set in my Nanny McPhee costume...
"The camera was coming around and the first AD (assistant director) was like, 'OK, time to shoot.' And I was standing there talking to Liam Neeson and I said, 'Hadn't I better go?' And he was like, 'No, no, no it's fine, Ralph (Fiennes) is just gonna come up here and he's gonna talk to me.' ...And I said, 'No I don't think it is fine actually' and so I went round and hid behind Danny Huston's thrown. So I am in the shot of Ralph coming into the set of Clash of the Titans, behind Apollo's throne is Nanny McPhee, hiding."
But Thompson admits it was a difficult task - because her movie outfit was so awkwardly shaped.
She adds, "I was trying desperately to sort of (hide). And it's hard to hide in that bloody costume, it's six feet wide!"

Liam Neeson has dropped out of Steven Spielberg’s planned Abraham Lincoln biopic.
Digital Spy reports that the actor, speaking to the UK’s GMTV, claimed he is too old to play the 16th U.S. president, who was assassinated in 1865.
Neeson, who starred for Spielberg as Oskar Schindler in the Oscar-winning Schindler's List, had been attached to the film since 2005.
"I'm not actually playing Lincoln now. I was attached to it for a while, but it's now I'm past my sell-by date," Neeson said.
He will, however, play President Lyndon B. Johnson in Lee Daniels's civil rights drama Selma.
Story: http://power.networksolutions.com/index.html

Neeson was married to Redgrave's daughter Natasha Richardson before her untimely death last year (09).
He has remained close to Richardson's family and took her mother and their two sons for a day out to watch his action film.
But classical actress Redgrave struggled to understand what was going on in the blockbuster.
Neeson explains, "I went to see the film with my two boys and my mother-in-law. Three-quarters of the way through, I asked her, 'Vanessa, are you following it?' She said, 'I am a little bit confused - but I love every second of it!'
"We all loved it and I guess I got a little bit of cred (credibility) with my boys."

Returned to Broadway playing Oscar Wilde in David Hare's drama "The Judas Kiss"

Summary

From real life legends like Oskar Schindler and Michael Collins to classic literature's Jean Valjean, actor Liam Neeson's masterful characterizations of flawed men capable of extraordinary things established him as a performer of great note, while managing to bring an uncommon humble grace to his profession. Though he started performing in the mid-1970s as part of an Irish acting company, Neeson earned international prominence years later when he played the flawed, but ultimately redemptive German industrialist in "Schindler's List" (1993), which earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Neeson would sink his teeth into "Michael Collins" (1996), playing an Irish hero revered by multiple generations, then settled into a series of lesser known, but no less accomplished performances in features, including a compelling performance in the title role of "Kinsey" (2004). But it was turns as Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn in "Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace" (1999), Zeus in the remake of "Clash of the Titans" (2010) and John "Hannibal" Smith in "The A-Team" (2010) that gave Neeson his widest appeal to moviegoers. Shockingly widowed in 2009 after his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, passed away after a ski-related concussion, a shell shocked Neeson continued to work steadily, becoming admired as much for the strength of character he exhibited in the wake of the family tragedy as he was for his acting talent. Whether appearing in big-budget blockbusters like "Battleship" (2012) and "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012) or smaller, artier fare like "Chloe" (2009), Liam Neeson consistently delivered quality work in both leading and supporting roles.

Met while co-starring together in the Broadway revival of "Anna Christie" (1993); Co-starred in the film "Nell" (1994); Married July 3, 1994 until Richardson's death on March 18, 2009 due to head injury from a skiing accident; Richardson died on March 18, 2009 due to head injury from a skiing accident

Education

Name

Queen's University

Notes

"Doing ['Schindler's List'] made me aware of the importance of what you say on a 20-foot screen that 20 million people are going to see. There's a responsibility. It's not that I wanted to play good guys all the time. But it made me wary of doing a piece of trash just because it had a large budget. Not that there's anything wrong with entertainment, and Hollywood will churn that out regardless. It's just that I was suddenly made aware of the responsibilities I have as an actor." – Neeson quoted in The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 20, 1994

"It comes to the point where you feel raped, where nothing is private and everybody and his f*ck*ng mother knows something about my personal life. You come away feeling cheap and tacky." – Neeson on the tabloid press to USA Today, April 3, 1995

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I get a chance to do something I love and they pay me lots of money for it. This is an honor to sit with you in this beautiful hotel in Los Angeles. It should be wintertime, man. I should be working in some factory in Belfast. But I'm not. I give thanks for that." – Neeson quoted in Movieline magazine, May 1999

"There's actors who want to know what their character had for breakfast last Tuesday. I'm not from that school. I had this amazing costume, half samurai, half Arthurian, and just having that on I got the guy. I knew how he stood. So do I know this world? Yes, I do. But if I have to describe it, I can't." – Neeson on how he as an actor approached Qui-Gon Jinn, his character in "The Phantom Menace" to Movieline magazine, May 1999

Neeson was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in December 1999.

Neeson suffered a broken pelvis when his motorcycle collided with a deer near his upstate New York home on July 11, 2000.

In 2002, Neeson received an Order of the British Empire Award from Queen Elizabeth for his stage and screen career.

"I don't set out to play real people; what usually motivates me is the quality of the writing. But yeah, I guess I may subconsciously seek them out. These are people who stand for something, something that is good to remind audiences of; they had a code of ethics that you perhaps don't find anymore." – Neeson on playing historical characters such as Oskar Schindler and Alfred Kinsey to The Observer, Oct. 13, 2002

"We're all groping our way through life and hoping we'll be accepted and tolerated. And, God bless people like Kinsey who can kind of shine a light into a murky area of our humanity." – Neeson talking about Alfred Kinsey, whom he portrayed in "Kinsey" to Cynthia McFadden of ABC's Primetime, Oct. 14, 2004

"I thought I'd be the pipe-smoking, roaring-fire, cardigan-wearing dad, and I became totally frozen. I looked at my wife with pleading eyes: 'You go first!' She went first." – Neeson, on how he reacted when he sons asked him about sex, quoted to People magazine, Nov. 22, 2004